Short answers, pulled from the story.
2001: A Space Odyssey premiered on the 2nd of April 1968 at the Uptown Theater in Washington, D.C. The film was produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, who co-wrote the screenplay with Arthur C. Clarke.
The film drew primarily on two short stories by Arthur C. Clarke: "The Sentinel" (1951), which served as the main source material, and "Encounter in the Dawn" (1953), which inspired the film's "Dawn of Man" sequence. Kubrick chose "The Sentinel" from six stories Clarke offered him by May 1964.
Kubrick commissioned a score from Alex North during early production but abandoned it during post-production in favour of pre-existing classical recordings by Richard Strauss, Johann Strauss II, Aram Khachaturian, and György Ligeti. Kubrick felt the classical music existed "outside the action" and brought transcendence to the visuals, whereas a conventional score would underline the action with emotional cues. North did not discover his score had been dropped until he attended the film's premiere.
In early drafts, HAL 9000 was named Athena after the Greek goddess of wisdom and had a feminine voice and persona. The character's breakdown was also more explicitly explained in earlier versions before Kubrick removed that explanation to make the film more ambiguous.
The production came in at approximately $10.5 million, running $4.5 million over its initial $6 million budget and finishing 16 months behind schedule. Worldwide, the film has grossed $148.5 million across all releases, with some estimates placing the figure above $190 million.
Kubrick and editor Ray Lovejoy cut the film between the 5th and the 9th of April 1968, trimming roughly 17-19 minutes from the 160-minute premiere cut to produce a version of approximately 139 minutes. Kubrick reportedly had the original negatives burned before his death. In December 2010, Douglas Trumbull announced that Warner Bros. had found 17 minutes of this footage, "perfectly preserved," in a Kansas salt mine vault, though no plans for its release have been announced.